Humanity's Smartest
by bumpcake
Summary: Who is Rick Kriger? To the public, he is a high-ranking member of the scouts. A tax drain. Perhaps it's easier to think of him that way. After all, the truth is always much more complicated.


Annie was convinced that everyone in the Military Police was hopeless. You had the stubborn people like Marlowe, the selfish people like Hitch, and then there was everyone in between. Well, everyone was like that except for one person. Rick Krieger. His curly golden brown hair was relatively long, but not extremely. His hazel eyes were intimidating yet calm, suggesting that he knew all of your secrets (which he probably did) but would not reveal them to anyone else. His slightly tall stature and glasses only added to the air of ease and order which surrounded him. However, that air of ease and order quickly vanished when his former squad leader, Hange Zoe burst into his neat, moderately sized office at midnight.

"Dammit, Hange!" he shouted, not flinching once but still expressing shock. He sighed. "How much coffee did you drink before riding over here on your horse, Hange?" He leaned back in his chair, looking at the scientist who was currently leaning in the doorway. Silence passed. He looked over at her and saw an excited grin on her face.

"Go on, enlighten me!" She replied happily.

"What do you mean?" Rick already knew what she meant, but he had hoped that playing dumb would prevent her from pursuing her point.

"Oh, come on man!" Hange said, pouting. "I want to know how the genius detective figured it out!" She plopped down on one of the empty chairs.

"What, figured out that you had coffee and rode your horse?" Despite only being in the military police for five days, Hange still decided to call him a detective.

"Yes!" She replied, eyes alight.

"You usually drink tea to give you your caffeine and you smell like your horse." He wrinkled his nose. "Has Levi forced you to take your shower yet?" Levi had the habit of knocking Hange out to forcibly bathe her, a practice which Rick thought was highly required. He sighed and glanced at Hange. "What did Levi do now?"

Hange bolted up in excitement. "Yay! I knew we'd get there eventually!"

"You have a tea stain on your collar. The tea seems to be rare, indicating that it had come from Levi. However, the stain on your collar suggests that you had been drinking it quickly, signaling that you did not want to get caught drinking the tea, meaning that you wanted to quickly dispose of some of Levi's tea, meaning that he did something to annoy you." He looked at Hange to see her reaction, only to find her inspecting her collar, presumably looking for the stain.

"Anyway, I got the stuff set up right here." He gestured at his neatly organized desk. "I was about to put it away."

Hange was overjoyed. "Yay! Fetal pigs! These are so much more fun to dissect than worms!" She stuck her tongue out at him.

Rick sighed, leaning back in his seat and running his hands through his hair.

"You try to find something interesting to dissect. I caught those worms myself, you know."

Hange smiled, glancing at Rick's broken arm. Rick noticed her staring.

"The doctor said that my arm should heal after three to six months." While it wasn't uncommon for scouts to experience injuries, most of the better-off scouts were forced to undergo menial chores while the others would be out training. However, Erwin decided to take pity on the veteran scout and let him temporarily relocate to another regiment. Erwin, have emotions? *gasp* However, he wasn't expecting to stay for the entire time it would take for his left arm to heal. This was a relief to Rick because in his mind, he didn't really do anything noteworthy. What happened was fairly normal…

* * *

The scouts were not having a great day. Some time after heading off on expedition the troops were called back due to a gate being breached. After reaching Trost, they found it completely overrun with titans. Rick was standing on a roof, gazing down at the carnage.

Blood.

Death.

Human agony.

That one suicidal guy.

All in all, it was a fairly normal sight for a member of the scouts.

A couple of blocks down, Rick could see four trainees sitting on a roof, obviously too shell shocked to fight. To their left were nine? fifteen? titans. Leaping off of the roof, Rick shouted a few obscenities and made his way towards the recruits.

 _Motherasscuntfuck-_

Rick made a tight turn around one of the corners, just barely killing the one of the titans. _Titbitchdick-_

Rick swooped down to the ground, barely avoiding getting turned into paste. He shot his cables into the hair of the second titan, sending him shooting upwards. In his moment of weightlessness, Rick took his blades and sliced the titan's nape, killing it. As he began his descent downwards, Rick shot his cables into the still-standing corpse of the titan's hair for the second time, launching him upwards and in front of the next titan. The titan's corpse collapsed the second Rick's cables left it's head.

 _Pussybuffoncock-_

Rick fired his cables into the roof of the third titan's mouth, launching him into the titan's mouth, resulting in a loud _crack_ from his left arm. Somehow screaming even louder than before, Rick got to work. The titan reached into its mouth, aware that it's prey was still alive, but stopped in its tracks when Rick burst through a huge cut leading from the back of the mouth to its nape, spraying blood everywhere.

 _Shitshitshitshit-_

Rick took out two titans.

 _Fuckfuckfuck-_

And then two more.

And maybe a few more.

He wasn't sure when he blacked out.

* * *

She beamed at him. "Well, I'm sure it will be great to have you back! I bet you're bored out of your mind over here."

"I find ways of amusing myself." Like dissecting things with a crazy woman.

"Ah yes, taking down the occasional mob boss, eh? Pass me that spoon." She began removing the eyeballs.

They carried on in somewhat peaceful silence.

"So Hange, you said you were going to conduct some experiments on the titan shifter, right?"

Hange's head almost did a 360-degree turn. She stared at him and began to whisper quietly. "Ahh yes, huehuehue… yes...huehuehue…"

Normally at this point in the conversation the person would quietly back away from Hange or grab an object to defend themselves with. However, Rick did not seem disturbed in the slightest and smiled as Hange started shaking with excitement, her words only barely audible.

After Hange left, Rick looked down at the dissected pig fetuses in front of him. He took a deep breath and promptly fell asleep in his chair.

He awoke to knocking on his door. While he should've expected this (he was open to people offering him cases, after all) he really needed to get used to people knocking whenever. He wasn't really getting any extra payment from the people, but the cases were a fun way of getting out of the menial tasks the newbies were assigned. He paused, realizing the the door was still closed. He opened the door to a somewhat bitchy looking girl with wavy hair. In her hand was a thick stack of papers.

"So I heard you could help me with…" She immediately went silent, looking at the fetal pigs which were still out in the open. "I'm gonna come back later…"

Rick sighed, realizing the reason for her sudden departure. He pulled open a drawer in his desk, revealing a bucket of liquid. He dumped the pigs into the liquid and looked at the clock. The door knocked again. He opened it again.

Rick had never really talked to Annie before. Of course, everyone was forced to "meet each other" on the first day, but everybody used that time to

See how they could abuse their power.

Or

2\. See who they could take advantage of or bribe.

However, Rick could tell two things from briefly looking at Annie.

Why are you looking at me

Fuck off

Rick decided to not pursue any more research after that point.


End file.
